Zegapain was a cross-media franchise from the geniuses of Bandai-Namco and Sunrise announced alongside the announcement of the Japanese release of the Xbox 360. You maybe be shocked to learn I did not buy this game at release because I was an exchange student in Japan and not stupid enough to buy a Japanese Xbox 360, which would have allowed me to play the Asian version of Gears of War with internet friends in America. I instead bought many video games for other systems.
A few years later in America I would buy Nier for the Playstation 3 as soon as it was available. Even before the disc crossed the counter into my hands, the developer, cavia, had been folded and tossed away by AQ Interactive. The director of that game, Yoko Taro, is now considered a genius by most of the video game world. Thus Nier is the work of a genius (true.) Thus that creates interest and desire to play every game made by the studio that made Nier: cavia.
cavia had made a series of well regarded under the radar games in their existence that allowed you to be cool then and now to say, “The Ghost in The Shell game for PS2 is dope.” I’ll say it right here, that game is one of my favorites for the system. I constantly have to stop myself from buying it for a 3rd time. I don’t like Winback for the N64 though, and I’ve been told I am wrong for not liking it, sorry.
On the Microsoft Xbox 360 cavia would make Nier (previously mentioned) and Bullet Witch. Bullet Witch is absolutely one of the best games for the system. I almost don’t care the recent PC port hardlocks and is unplayable. I love it that much. The world will wake up and realize a giant destructive game of 4 hours length and 6 stages is perfect and beautiful.
That same year they released two games called Zegapain. Zegapain XOR in the summer of 2006 and then Zegapain NOT in the winter of 2006. Both of these games were full priced releases. There was a demo for XOR which you could play on any region Xbox 360. It is baffling to even the amateur Japanese speaker as the game just keeps screaming at you while endless waves of enemies spawn and attack you. I must have started and stopped that demo 10 times.
I have been thinking about this game for 18 years. It’s never left my thoughts. It also never crossed the threshold in my thoughts that meant actually buying a Japanese Xbox 360 and playing Idolm@ster, Instant Brain, DonDonPachi Daioujou Black Label (now on PS4/Switch Buy Now), Mushihimesama (now on Switch and PC Buy Now), Shooting Love 200X (Now on PC), and of course Zegapain XOR and NOT.
Zegapain despite being remembered by no one, was an anime. That anime, despite being remember by no one, is being revived right now. So it is also, in 2024 I have finally played Zegapain XOR and NOT to completion.
Before I actually talk about the game, I do need to again state these were both full price releases at the beginning of the Japanese XBox 360’s life. The Japanese Xbox 360 was not successful despite how much money was thrown at Japanese talent by Microsoft. If we start looking at that time period too closely we’ll have to say things like Japanese video games were not succesful.
if you have to get one Zegapain make it NOT
Zegapain XOR is also not successful. It is barely a video game. looking at it for 10 seconds and liking video games in 2006 would make you involuntarily say “That looks like Zone of Enders by Hideo Kojima.” You got the facts wrong. You are not wrong. It plays like Zone of Enders. Zone of Enders is a fantastic 3 hour video game about a boy being stuck in a murder mech and forced to reckon with violence and war. It then got a sequel which is a more full fledged game that I have been scared to return to (available right now with added VR features for the PS4 and PC.)
You cannot grab enemies in Zegapain. You have a short range shot, a melee attack, and a homing shot charged by holding shot. The first 10 of 15 missions are finished by holding the homing shot and moving away from the enemy. The enemy are mere specs on the screen. In the back 5 missions of XOR they decide to start having level design. This is not good.
Trying to use the melee attack on the tiny specs causes your lock on to break. You regain lock on by charging your homing shot. Often the lock on follows an already defeated spec. You can boost in the X-Y planes, and use the left bumper buttons to move slowly vertically. As far as I could manage there was none of the neat button combos that are present in Zone of Enders. So there is nothing to do but stand back and using homing laser.
As a quick cash-in tie-in game there are horrible bugs present. Sometimes the camera gets stuck and you’ll watch the mech, the Zegapain, still under your control fly off into the distance or behind your camera. The only option is restart the mission.
The plot is roughly the same plot as the original Gundam. There is a rival, who looks like you, who calls you Original. You fight him midway through the game. Then at the end he shoves himself into the death star core as it is exploding. You wonder what that was about.
Unlike Gundam, obviously, is there is a bunch of nonsense about clones. Sometimes a character dies and is immediately revived without their memories. The story is only ever presented as cardboard stills on a static shot of a ship’s bridge, with nicely-voiced characters talking back and forth. There are no cutscenes or character interactions otherwise. The budget again, shows itself.
A mere image search shows none of the characters from the game are the main characters from the anime. The anime characters look better.
If you had an Xbox 360 you knew a big full box release was worth 1000 achievement points. You would be infuriated and heartbroken to know that Zegapain XOR only contains 500 points. You’d have to wait six months and open your wallet again for Zegapain NOT. 18 years later I think this is hilarious. A chief capitalism joke. Bullet Witch had an achievement worth one point for beating the game on the highest difficulty. That’s funnier because the joke is the system, not the player’s choices.
Speaking of choices, just like real life you can whoo girls in Zegapain by talking to them and then playing the video game good. Unforunately you have to do this before the final 3rd of the game. There is no way to track your progress. You can replay missions. You cannot see your currently held rank for each one. You also unlock parts for your Zegapain by doing well. I don’t know what doing well means in this game.
So I took the ending it gave me which featured no special girl scene or anything special at all.
Later in the Xbox 360’s life would be the excellent shooter Strania. It would be followed up with the excellent DLC where you play the game in reverse as the bad guy. It’s weird that happened twice on this console.
Zegapain NOT has you play the exact same opening cutscene and mission as XOR. Then you wake up as a clone of the hero on the evil guy’s ship. Everyone is a mean clone to you and tells you to shut up and die. It is funny in a way they don’t intend. the evil ship’s bridge is the same as the good bridge, just color shifted and mirrored.
In a way that gives one pause you swear NOT plays better than XOR, if only a tiny bit. Though you are immediately playing as conservatively as before, because aggressive and potentially fun play just gets you killed.
NOT does feature misssion design. That design is frequently repeated from mission to mission. cavia again did not have enough to make a good full game. Do the exact same mission you just did, but with more stopping points and no checkpoints. That’s not fair, eventually one of your evil clone pilots decides you have to die and from there to the end of the game each mission ends with you doing a fight against them. The only safe way to defeat them is to dash backwards as fast as you can and chip at them with your homing missiles. In NOT they provide you with a boss health bar, thankfully. However that just leads to disspair as the bar decreases by 1 of 100 for each hit, while they can wipe you out within 10 seconds of careless play.
Perhaps if you had done better in the earlier missions you could have unlocked stronger weapons. NOT revamped the scoring system so a SS Rank is always out of your reach.
NOT reaches a point of intense monotony and difficulty. Each mission feels the same as the last and if not that the same as XOR. NOT is certainly the better game and if you had to get one Zegapain make it NOT. And at least in NOT you meet a villain and have an antagonist that pays off. The ending has you and one of the girls entering stasis thousands of lightyears from civilization. Your only hope is some piece of technology comes into range at some point so you can dump your personal data and a different you can be revived instantly. That’s pretty cool let’s be fair. You don’t get to find out if that happens.
XOR took me about 5 hours. NOT took about 7, in frustation and tragedy. It was good to close this chapter in my Gamer’s History. There is Zone of Enders before it, and there is Astebreed after it. the developers of Nier:Automata didn’t not look hard at Astebreed. You should look hard at Astebreed and let me have done the hard work looking at this game forgotten.
Rudie
March 19th 2024
Hinge Problems 
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